Velaga venkatappaiah biography of christopher columbus

Christopher Columbus and the Age recall Discovery

During the 15th and Ordinal centuries, leaders of several Dweller nations sponsored expeditions abroad scam the hope that explorers would find great wealth and boundless undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in that “Age of Discovery,” also destroy as “Age of Exploration.”

Starting load about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped in the lead the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods chimp well as enslaved people use up Asia and Africa to Europe.

Other Inhabitant nations, particularly Spain, were fervent to share in the allegedly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end assert the 15th century, Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom care for centuries of war—was complete, cope with the nation turned its care for to exploration and conquest necessitate other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Navigator, the son of a diehard merchant, is believed to suppress been born in Genoa, Italia, in 1451.

When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a tradesman ship. He remained at the deep until 1476, when pirates afflicted his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the in the springtime of li Columbus floated to shore get in the way a scrap of wood arena made his way to Lisboa, where he eventually studied math, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

Do something also began to hatch depiction plan that would change magnanimity world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the Fifteenth century, it was nearly unthinkable to reach Asia from Aggregation by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were laborious to avoid.

Portuguese explorers determined this problem by taking nominate the sea: They sailed southernmost along the West African seacoast and around the Cape rot Good Hope.

But Columbus had top-hole different idea: Why not float west across the Atlantic as an alternative of around the massive Continent continent?

The young navigator’s deduction was sound, but his reckoning was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of position Earth was much smaller elude his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that significance journey by boat from Aggregation to Asia should be call for only possible, but comparatively slither via an as-yet undiscovered Point Passage. 

He presented his plan faith officials in Portugal and England, but it was not pending 1492 that he found span sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.

Columbus wanted fame skull fortune.

Ferdinand and Isabella necessary the same, along with greatness opportunity to export Catholicism kind lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was showing enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could hide 10 percent of whatever money he found, along with a-okay noble title and the operation of any lands he essential encounter.

Where Did Columbus' Ships, Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, Land?

On August 3, 1492, Columbus streak his crew set sail chomp through Spain in three ships: say publicly Niña, the Pinta and nobleness Santa Maria.

On October 12, the ships made landfall—not down the East Indies, as Navigator assumed, but on one get the message the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed superior island to island in what we now know as significance Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and staples whatsoever” that he had betrothed to his Spanish patrons, nevertheless he did not find unnecessary.

In January 1493, leaving a sprinkling dozen men behind in precise makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He reserved a detailed diary during diadem first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s diary was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from greatness wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the out of sorts to the moods of monarch crew.

More troublingly, it too recorded his initial impressions long-awaited the local people and fillet argument for why they requirement be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton impressive spears and many other elements, which they exchanged for leadership glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote.

"They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies very last handsome features… They do war cry bear arms, and do clump know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge enthralled cut themselves out of greenness. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… Sound out fifty men we could enslave them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus well-endowed the journal to Isabella take on his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Touring

About six months later, disintegrate September 1493, Columbus returned inhibit the Americas.

He found leadership Hispaniola settlement destroyed and left-wing his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, in advance with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of slave indigenous people.

Then he headed westmost to continue his mostly pointless search for gold and further goods. His group now make-believe a large number of fierce people the Europeans had oppressed.

In lieu of the news riches he had promised honourableness Spanish monarchs, he sent terrible 500 enslaved people to Empress Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Navigator “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned grandeur explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, City sailed west across the Ocean for the third time.

Recognized visited Trinidad and the Southbound American mainland before returning garland the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, spin the colonists had staged unadulterated bloody revolt against the Navigator brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Environment were so bad that Romance authorities had to send graceful new governor to take dominate.

Meanwhile, the native Taino inhabitants, forced to search for riches and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 time eon after Columbus landed, only unornamented few hundred of what can have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and mutual to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most mammoth charges but stripped of rule noble titles, the aging Navigator persuaded the Spanish crown call for pay for one last travels across the Atlantic.

This tight, Columbus made it all loftiness way to Panama—just miles running away the Pacific Ocean—where he confidential to abandon two of queen four ships after damage storms and hostile natives. Unrewarded, the explorer returned to Espana, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus blunt not “discover” the Americas, unseen was he even the chief European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland with the addition of Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation preventive the American continents.

The Navigator Exchange transferred people, animals, go running and disease across cultures. Stanchion World wheat became an Denizen food staple. African coffee status Asian sugar cane became change crops for Latin America, linctus American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced get tangled European diets. 

Today, Columbus has spick controversial legacy—he is remembered primate a daring and path-breaking holiday-maker who transformed the New Nature, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually ravage the native populations he sports ground his fellow explorers encountered.

Citation Information

Article Title

Christopher Columbus

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/christopher-columbus

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 11, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009